From the course: Building Resilience (2014)

What's resilience?

From the course: Building Resilience (2014)

What's resilience?

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- We all have situations when things don't go our way. Change is dumped on us on when the unexpected happens. Many of us will collapse under under the stress and worry but there are the lucky few who are able to handle these events in stride. It's almost as if they perform better because of it. Why is that? Do they simply have a different outlook? What are the skills and behaviors of people who are resilient? Can we learn from them and become more resilient ourselves? So what is resilience? To really understand it, let's talk about what it's not. Resilience is not tenacity. It's not the ability to stick with a task no matter how tough it is and see it through. That's called grit and although grit is a necessary ingredient for success in any field, today, we will not talk about pushing through. We'll be talking about bouncing back. Resilience is a key ingredient in the process of adversity and recovery. It's the ability to not fold under pressure even if you don't feel calm and confident. To be able to sustain energy throughout highly demanding tasks and to be able to quickly pull yourself together, bounce back even if you're experiencing a major setback. The process of being resilient can involve many qualities including positive outlook, empathy, emotional regulation, and self-efficacy. Even though resilience may sound like an innate skill, I have good news for you, it's not. Resilience can be learned. I like to use the metaphor of an athletic event. If you've ever trained for running, hiking, cycling, or any other high-performance event, you know that there are certain things you can do to put yourself in the best shape possible. Your skills can improve with work and persistence. In this course, we will work on those behaviors to strengthen skills and ultimately raise your resilience threshold.

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